The Women's Tax Resistance League (WTRL) was from 1909 to 1918 a direct action group associated with the Women's Freedom League that used tax resistance to protest against the disenfranchisement of women during the British women's suffrage movement.
Dora Montefiore proposed the formation of the league in 1897, and it was formally established on 22 October 1909.[1] The league's activities peaked in the years before the First World War but were largely deflated in 1914 by the onset of that war, when the league membership passed a resolution to temporarily suspend their tax resistance.
Members saw themselves in a tradition of British tax resistance that included John Hampden. According to one source: "Tax resistance proved to be the longest-lived form of militancy, and the most difficult to prosecute. More than 220 women, mostly middle-class, participated in tax resistance between 1906 and 1918, some continuing to resist through the First World War, despite a general suspension of militancy."[2]
- ^ Gross, David M. (2014). 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. Picket Line Press. pp. 44, 67, 94, 189. ISBN 978-1490572741.
- ^ Nym Mayhall, Laura E. (2003). The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860–1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195159936.